Subjective Spirituality: The Romans Riddle

2 January 2018

Paul ends Romans 7 crying out for deliverance: “Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this dead body?” Paul begins Romans 12 with a charge: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, *acceptable to God*, which is your reasonable service.” The gap between those two passages presents one of the great riddles of Romans. What happens between the end of Romans 7 and the beginning of Romans 12 that qualifies “this dead body” as an acceptable sacrifice?

Mull that over for a minute. 

Paul answers that question in 8:9-11. The body is dead, and will remain unredeemed until the resurrection, but there is a divine thumb on the scales. Despite the body being unredeemed, He gives life to our dead bodies through the Spirit who indwells us.

Once upon a time, knowing that would have been enough for me–I solved the riddle! Yay!!!

But not anymore. I used to be an academic, but these days I’m a pastor and a bodyworker, and seeing people delivered from death is what I care about. I’m very much a practitioner first. So let’s apply it. If we take Romans 8:11 literally—and I don’t see why we shouldn’t—it means that there is a Person who is not me, indwelling me and enabling me to live in a manner that would otherwise be barred to me this side of the resurrection. That is not simply a matter of verbal contemplation; it is as experiential as it gets. So for example, suppose I find myself totally unable to forgive someone. This doctrine teaches me that what I cannot do in my dead body (Romans 7), God can make possible anyway. So I should cry out to God for deliverance, and see what happens.

In God’s providence, I experienced that deliverance long before I ever understood Romans 8.

I had labored to forgive a number of people who had wronged me. I had reached the point where I only had one person left to forgive–and I couldn’t do it. I understood all the doctrine, and I could say all the right words, but it just didn’t work. I hated her in my heart, and that was that. For days I tried. I could not forgive her.

Then, one afternoon, I got down on my knees and prayed a simple prayer: “God, I know you want me to forgive her. You know I want to, but I can’t do it. You have to do this, or it won’t happen.” Then I stood up. I don’t know how to describe what happened other than this: when my knees were on the ground, I hated her. By the time I was standing, the hate was just gone.

God answered my prayer; in Romans terms, the Spirit gave life to my dead body, enabling me to become an acceptable living sacrifice.

On a more recent occasion, I had someone on my table with a severe muscular problem in her leg. As I always do, I asked Jesus to show up and heal what needed to be healed in her. I released the muscles, but when the physical work was over, I could tell that we weren’t done yet. I anointed the area with oil and just held it, waiting. She got tenser, and tenser, and then the dam broke, and she began to sob. I kept holding and waiting. The storm passed, and when she was calm again, I asked for permission to move on. She gave it, and I finished the session. When a client has an emotional release like that, they often don’t tell you what it was about. In this case, she did. As I held that particular muscle, she realized she was harboring bitterness toward a friend who had betrayed her six months earlier. In that moment, she was able to grieve the loss of the friendship, and forgive the betrayal.

I knew almost nothing about my client’s situation; I could never have addressed it in that way. But God worked through me in ways that are well beyond my ability, and enabled her to see something that she’d been unable to see, too.

Another day, I sat across the table from a homeless man named Michael. Michael frequented a corner that I drove by often, and over the past several months, we had become friends. On this particular day, I’d been awake since 4 a.m., so at 9:30 I was having lunch, and buying him breakfast. As we ate, he told me about the several churches he would visit during the course of a week. He liked to go to these particular churches because they didn’t just give him stuff; they let him help out, so he was able to contribute something to them as well. “I go to four different churches, Tim,” he said, “and they tell me four different things about God’s plan for my life. What am I supposed to do?”

I laughed. “What, you want me to be the fifth person to tell you God’s plan for your life? How’s that gonna help?”

He chuckled.

“It sounds to me like you’ve heard plenty of people telling you what God thinks.” I said. “Now, you need to hear it from God.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You might live a life where God will tell you things, but I don’t live that kind of life. God isn’t going to talk to me.”

I smiled. “Michael, you’ve heard about Jesus dying on the cross, right?”

He nodded, and I continued.

“Lots of people know that it happened, but I bet nobody’s ever told you what it means. Jesus was perfect. He took every failing you have, all those things you are and all those things you’ve done that you think are the reasons God won’t talk to you, and He took them all to the cross with Him. When He died, all that stuff died with Him, and He took it into the grave. When He rose from the dead three days later, He did not come out dragging a Hefty bag full of your junk. He left all that behind, dead and buried. God loves you. He’s crazy about you. He wants to talk with you, and none of that stuff can get in the way.”

I could see that he didn’t really believe me, but he understood what I was saying, so I kept going.

“Let’s just try it,” I said. “Give me 60 seconds.” I waggled my watch. “You listen and see if God talks to you. If you honestly don’t hear anything, you can walk out of here and tell yourself that I’m crazy, and you’ve only lost one minute of your life. But what if I’m right? Would you want to miss out on that?”

He thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay.”

I didn’t bow my head or close my eyes. I just talked like God was sitting in the booth right next to Michael (because He was). “God, this is Michael. He doesn’t believe that you’ll talk to him. I’m asking you to speak to him now, and to make it really clear, so he can hear you.” And then I shut up.

Surgeon General’s warning: Asking God to speak to people may cause elevated heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, and anxiety. Of course, I was silently praying furiously for God to speak. Meanwhile, I was watching Michael’s face and my watch, and trying to be calm about it. He looked down at his plate, and sat quietly. 30 seconds passed. Nothing. 40 seconds. Still nothing. I was praying hard: “God, You taught me to do this. I crawled way out here on the skinny branches for You. Don’t You dare let me down.”

With a few seconds to go, suddenly Michael’s face changed.

“What did you hear?” I asked.

“You know,” he said, “I have some people that want to help me get off the street. But I haven’t let them because I can’t pay them back. I just had this sudden thought out of nowhere that I need to humble myself and accept the help they’re offering me. That it’s my pride that’s holding me down, and I need to be willing to be humble.” He looked up at me. “Was that God?”

I laughed. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself, buddy.” I told him. “But in my experience, the devil doesn’t usually tell me to be humble, you know?”

I could give many more examples, stories from my own life and others I know. You can probably think of your own, too. (If you can’t, let’s talk. You’re missing out on something important.) But these are sufficient to make the point: whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, just like the man said. It even works in intercession, sometimes.
This is, of course, highly subjective. Since the deliverance in question is existential salvation from internal problems, I don’t see how it could be anything but subjective. But the problems were real, and deadly; the salvation is just as real. It’s life in the place of death, as promised in Romans 8:11.

 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Covering Grace

17 November 2017

It’s not possible to learn a craft—-any craft—without messing up. Whether it’s shoe-shining or surgery, you’re going to make mistakes. And how! So what do you do when you’re in ministry? You’re elbow-deep in people’s lives, at the moments when they’re in deepest pain. You represent God. When you make a mistake, people get hurt — badly. They get a false view of God and other people that can impact them for years to come. You can’t afford to make those kinds of mistakes. Right?

Wrong. That is a lie from the enemy, designed to paralyze you into inaction.

God knows better than anyone that you can’t learn anything without making some mistakes. And He has planned, from eternity past, for your mistakes. He loves the people you work with and minister to, just as much as He loves you. He’s got them, just like He’s got you. This isn’t an excuse to be lazy or a reason to shortcut your preparation. Your diligence is definitely required, or you won’t get better at your craft.

But God has not given us a spirit of fear. Don’t refuse to practice your craft because you’re afraid. Get out there. Do your work. Rest on the grace of God that covers you. Trust Him. He’s got you, and everyone around you. Trust and obey.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Not That Simple

10 November 2017

I was talking recently with a friend about the differences between the way I used to prepare people for ministry (back when I was working in a seminary) versus the way I do it now. The biggest difference by far is the degree of experiential learning I insist on. We aren’t just going to learn about the Lordship of Christ; we’re going to put it to work by seeking to hear what He has to say to us and obeying, by praying for the world to come into submission to His will, by sending demons packing.

That focus on experiential learning does many things. It weeds out the people who want to be hearers, but not doers. It inculcates a great reverence for the truth, because we see it set us and others free in practice. But it also forces us to come to grips with the messy business of real application, which is frequently a lot harder than discussions in seminary classrooms make it sound.

 

In the seminary classroom, the prevailing questions would be “What is right?” or “What is true?” — both outstanding questions for a Christian to ask. But for many students, there was also a prevailing assumption that once those questions were properly answered, the proper course of action would be obvious. Well…not so much. Other students had a persistent case of the what-ifs: they could spin out endless scenarios that impossibly complicated any discussion of application. For both these problems, the solution is actual application to a particular situation.

For example, several years ago I was involved in an online forum for survivors of a particularly abusive group of churches. Many of these survivors posted anonymously because they were terrified of reprisals against themselves and their families. Meanwhile, active members of the churches in question would periodically come on the forum to defend their pastors, and would routinely challenge the anonymous posters to approach the pastors directly in line with the guidelines of Mt. 18, to identify themselves, and so on.

How are we to think about this?

In a way, the church members were obviously right. The Matthew 18 guidelines for conflict resolution must be adhered to; they are not merely a suggestion. And how about the golden rule? Would the anonymous posters want someone to post anonymous accusations about them on a public forum for the whole internet-connected world to read?

Moreover, there is no biblical precedent at all for anonymous accusations, and why would there be? The whole point is to bring about resolution of the conflict, and that can’t happen as long as the accuser remains anonymous, can it?

So that settles it, yes?

Not so fast…

First of all, for a number of these anonymous folks, the Matthew 18 standards had been tried. When they approached the pastor about his transgressions alone, he abused them and then lied to others about the conversation. He had his congregation so fooled, or so cowed, that for the most part nobody was willing to accompany the offended party to confront him a second time. As for telling it to the church…forget it.

Secondly, let’s look at the Golden Rule again. Suppose you had been brutalized by such a pastor, and suppose, broken and battered, you spoke up about it, only to incur further abuse and reprisals. Suppose you discover an internet forum where you can talk with fellow victims, receive some help and validation, and begin to heal, a place where you can speak freely without reprisal, because nobody would know who you were. Would you want that chance? Thought so. So why would you deny it to someone else?

Let us not forget, too, that there is a biblical example of speaking publicly to this sort of failure and abuse in a pastor’s ministry — III John. John the Apostle is more than willing to speak frankly in his letter about Diotrephes’ character, and also promises to address the problem more directly when he comes in person.

So the whole picture is a bit more complicated. Of course it is true that reconciliation can only happen if both parties are at the table, and neither one is hiding behind a cloak of online anonymity. And of course it is true that reconciliation is desirable. But reconciliation is not the only thing at stake here. Battered sheep need wound care. They need time in the spiritual hospital. That healing cannot happen in silence. The wounds need to be addressed in community with fellow believers.

What this means in practice is that the anonymous party will probably end up telling his story more than once. As a battered sheep who is simply trying to heal, he can share it anonymously and get some help. As he recovers and becomes, not just a battered sheep, but a Christian soldier prepared to do battle with wolves, he will tell the story again — but this time he will identify himself, give specific names and dates, and handle the reprisals as the cost of doing business. The goal with a battered sheep is to grow him into a Christian warrior. But growth takes time, and we have to start him from where he is — which is what God does with us.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Strong Magic Takes Blood

14 July 2017

My essay, “Strong Magic Takes Blood” was published at Theopolis Institute.  Take a look. 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Nobody Will Notice: A Love Letter

29 June 2017

“Pastor” means “shepherd,” but most of the people who have the word “pastor” on their business cards are not, in fact, shepherds. (This is okay; you can be a legit church leader without a shepherding gift. The Bible has other words for that — but that’s another post.)

Churches mostly don’t seek, interview for, or pay for shepherding. When it comes to the position we call “pastor,” churches mostly pay for the same things that any other corporation might pay for in a leader: visionaries, fundraisers, orators, administrators, technocrats — things that are visible or sexy (or preferably both), and relatively easy to track and measure.

Shepherds are hard to track.

The nature of effective shepherding is that if you don’t do it, nobody will notice. Injured sheep tend to hobble along with the rest of the flock as best they can, trying to look normal. They don’t want anyone to see. The whole group will join them in the pretense and be willfully blind to their wounds, because wounds make everyone uncomfortable. Lost sheep do not report themselves missing, and they don’t send up signal flares so you can find them. Nobody — not the missing or injured sheep, not the church leadership, and certainly not the rest of the flock — nobody actually wants a shepherd to do his or her job. Nobody wants the wound treated like it’s really there. Nobody who stayed wants to know why the lost sheep left.

You will be rewarded for following the crowd in their pretense that everything is fine. No one will complain. For the most part, even the lost and the wounded don’t expect you to help them. (In fact, “Why are you doing this?” is one of the most frequent questions I encounter. The answer is always the same: “Because you’re worth it. Because Jesus would.” They don’t believe me at first, but that’s okay.)

If you resist the temptation to ignore the lost and wounded, if you roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of fostering real healing, for the most part, no one will know except the people you help. You won’t announce to the world that you’re going to call Jack, who seems to be isolating himself, or that you think Madeline is not dealing with her mother’s death as well as she’s pretending. You will just call Jack and Madeline.

In most organizations, even those ostensibly devoted to healing, no one will assign you this job. If you resist the temptation to ignore the lost and wounded, about the best you can hope for is that nobody will notice. But honestly that’s not likely.

More likely, people will resent your shepherding without ever knowing what you are doing. Shepherding takes time, and you will always have other responsibilities. You will be encouraged to spend your time on visible, trackable things — managing programs, initiating a new social media marketing campaign, updating the website, promoting the building program, speaking, whatever. If you actually go and spend significant time with Jack and Madeline, your superiors are going to wonder why you’re not at your desk where you belong. What could you be doing, anyway, and why aren’t the TPS reports done?

(This is like wondering why a shepherd is out looking for a lost sheep instead of hanging around the sheepfold all day — but  good luck getting the board of your 501(c)(3) corporation to understand that.)

So you will initiate this work on your own, and in the teeth of your other responsibilities. You will just call a wounded sheep and say, “Hey, let’s get a cup of coffee.” Or you will swing by their house with a six-pack after work, sit on the patio, and drink and talk. You won’t just keep their secrets; you’ll keep it confidential that you even met, unless you want it blabbed all over church, or showing up as a sermon illustration. (Yeah, sorry, but that actually happens. Regularly.) It’s no one else’s business but theirs.

Maybe it’s one meeting. Maybe it’s two hours a week for a year. It doesn’t matter, because when you made that first phone call, you were signing up — to the best of your capacity — for whatever it takes. If you can’t help, you connect them with someone who can, but you usually don’t just get to drop it at that point. You check back in. You walk with them through it. Whatever it is — and it might be minor, or it might be literally the worst thing you’ve ever encountered in your life.

That’s the discipline.

That’s what good shepherds do.

If there’s a way of making a decent living at this, I certainly haven’t figured it out. But if Jesus called you to it…do it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

An Introduction to Spiritual Disciplines

17 September 2015

I had occasion to address Mosaic Church on the subject of spiritual disciplines. In this sermon, I don’t present a bunch of options so much as I aim for the heart of what makes a life of spiritual discipline that moves us closer to God instead of just building a better Pharisee. I hope you find it helpful.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Firm Foundations

24 August 2015

This post is part of the August 2015 Synchroblog on “What it means to be pro-life.” The writing prompt included the following quote from Sister Joan Chittister, OSB: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

“I say, old chap, you don’t look very balanced.”

Opposing abortion but turning a blind eye to the child once he’s born is not a balanced way to love your neighbor. That said, the imbalance on display is the same kind of imbalance you see in a sailor leaning off the high side of the boat for all he’s worth, trying to keep it from going over. The legal slaughter of a couple thousand children every day is the sort of thing that might send you off-center, if you think about it. Molech never had it so good; for Yahweh-fearing vertebrates, single-issue voting is an astonishingly mild response. What would Phineas do?

But a bunch of us want to talk about subsidized school lunches, early reading programs, and clean water in the third world — not so much because we are pro-life all the way through as because we’re tired of being uncool. [EDIT: The notable lack of participation in this month’s Synchroblog is a case in point. Compare it to August last year, or the ‘cooler’ topics — it’s painfully obvious that a bunch of us just found this one too hot to touch.] All the cool kids still think it’s better to keep the slaughter legal, and we’re tired of sitting at the nerds’ table. And the thing is, we don’t even have to give up our private pro-life convictions to change seats — all we have to do is not talk about it. Talk about Head Start, STEM education for girls, ethical coffee farming — anything but abortion.

Why? Because we are winning the war of definition. It used to be impossible to say that abortion is killing a baby without my hardcore pro-choice friends going off like Mount Vesuvius, but not anymore. I can say so out loud and in public and get away with it — as a man, yet! That was definitely not true even ten years ago. Even at the cool kids’ table, you can win that argument. You might struggle to get anyone to engage in the conversation, but if you have any spine at all, you’re not going to lose.

We. Are. Winning.

So as we engage the broader conversation of what it means to be pro-life, we need to build on the very effective and clear foundation that we have laid. We need to be masters of good and necessary consequence. We should take every opportunity to drive Sister Chittister’s reasoning to its conclusions. If we are in favor of saving that baby in utero, then we can’t balk at feeding the kid, or teaching him to read. We’re pro-life. And on the other hand, if you’re such a big fan of WIC that you’re willing to send IRS agents armed with home liens to collect the funding, then how in the world could you have been okay with flushing the kid just months before? Or put the other way round, if you were fine with killing him in utero, then why in the world do you care if we flush him now, at age 5, when it’s clear that he isn’t keeping up with the pack? Back then we were only guessing that he’d get left behind; now we know….

We should be sharpening the antithesis at every turn. The merchants of death who suddenly get religion about caring for children once they pass through the birth canal must be called to follow their visceral convictions about the value of newborns to the necessary conclusion. (Which, in case you missed it, is that Jesus is King and He built us to know the value of every life, including the ones who aren’t born yet.)

It is equally vital that the broader conversation focus on actual results, not just good intentions. We’re more than willing to hold the pro-life movement to this standard.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” they say, “of course we love children after they’re born.”

“Sure,” we reply, “but what are you going to do about it?”

And if all their money goes into fighting abortion at the opportunity cost of early literacy programs, if their intentions for the young children are professedly good but the results just aren’t there, then we will call them hypocrites — as Sister Chittister did.

But that leverage needs to get applied on the other side of the fence as well, and Sister Chittister’s statement sparkles with irony coming, as it does, from a Roman Catholic nun. She surely knows that privately funded programs (like the ones the Church runs all over the world) produce much better results than the expensive and ineffective tax-funded programs she wants us all to endorse. I am not quite prepared to believe that I can’t really be pro-life unless I’m willing to sign off on an extensive set of interventions administered by the same set of jokers that brought us the DMV.

Yes, yes, the intentions are good. We all feel ourselves very virtuous voting a bunch of public funding into something for the children. But remember, we are building on the foundation of the abortion conversation, and one of the key lessons is that results matter more than intentions. The mother may believe the hype about a lump of tissue, and have no intention of killing a baby. But if she goes through with the abortion, the baby is just as dead as if she’d given birth and then smothered it with a pillow. The actual results are what matter, and that doesn’t change after the child passes through the birth canal. So let’s not be idiots. Intentions don’t feed a kid or teach him to read — and neither does voting.

So I work with a community church that hosts a weekly food bank — not just dry goods, but fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy, too. Beyond that, we have a drop-in youth center 3 days a week (we want to do every day, but we don’t have the volunteer base for it yet), and we have a little “coffee shop” area that’s open anytime we’re in the building. Come calling anytime, and if someone’s there, you’re welcome to come in out of the weather, have a seat, and get a cup of cold water or hot coffee, as the whim takes you.

Our friends at the church two blocks down host a small medical clinic (and a food bank, too). Our friends at the church across the street have a day care and preschool for low-income families. And we do it all for you-wouldn’t-believe-how-little money. Because we are pro-life.

Is it working? Some of it, yes. The youth center is going gangbusters. The day care is great. The medical clinic catches problems that would become ER cases left untreated, and treats them while they’re easy and cheap to treat. That saves our local homeless population an incalculable amount of human suffering. The food banks, though….

You can’t starve in this town if you get sick and can’t go to work. The food banks furnish a safety net to folks who hit a run of bad luck, and that’s great. Some of our clients have taken advantage of the safety net when they needed it, and then gotten back up on their feet. Some others, instead of being empowered and encouraged, have become permanently dependent on us. That was never the goal, and we need to do better by them. Human dignity thrives when we are able to be generous, not when we are continually dependent on the generosity of others. We have a population that we have failed to empower to give; we are robbing them of their dignity in order to feed them. I don’t know what the answer is — if I had a better solution, I’d be pushing for it. I pray that God will give us one.

Until the New Jerusalem comes in for a landing and heaven has officially come to earth, there will be room for improvement. Let’s seek all the improvement that God will give us.

***

You might also enjoy the other posts in this month’s synchroblog:

 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Imago Dei: Loving the Different

21 July 2015

This post is part of the July Synchroblog on gay marriage. 

Once upon a time — if time is an appropriate word — there was nothing. Not infinite empty space, just…nothing. Nothing but the triune God, dancing alone, complete and content. And then again, not alone, because there were three Persons together, each one distinct and quite different from the others, each one loving the other two. (If two other people love you, you’re hardly alone, right?) Lacking nothing and needing nothing, secure in the love of each Person for the others, God danced like nobody was watching.

There was nobody to watch, until out of the overflow of each Person’s love for the others, God made the heavens and the earth.

The Breath of God brooded over the primordial waters like a hen on a nest, until the Father spoke a Word.

“Be light!” And there was light. Having commanded the light into existence, He divided it from its contrasting element, the darkness, and gave them each a name: Day and Night. The Three gazed on what He had made. Seeing that it reflected the aspects of the Three that He wished it to display, He pronounced it good.

Then evening came, and morning, and God began to create again. For six days, the Three enriched the creation like a painter working on a canvas, pausing each evening and beginning work again the next day, and it was all good. He made the sky, separating the waters above from the waters below. He gathered the waters below the sky into one place, and brought up dry land out of the water. In the middle of the third day, the Three stopped naming things, but He kept creating. He populated the land with plants and set lights in the sky to give signs and seasons, to measure out days and years. He made great swarms of creatures to populate the water and the air. He populated the land with domestic animals, wild beasts, and an abundance of creepy-crawlies of every description. He seemed to have a great fondness for beetles.

All this reflected aspects of the Three, but when it came time to sign the canvas, God wanted to do something special, to put a particular representation of Himself on His creation. So the Three took counsel together: “Let’s make humanity in Our image, like Us, and let’s give them rule over the whole earth and all its creatures.” And God began to sculpt. He formed a man from the dust, and breathed life into his nostrils, and man became a living being named Dirt. Then God did something He had never done before. The Three Persons looked at the sculpture, which was just one person, and said, “That’s not good. Something is missing. I will make a helper comparable to him.”

God brought animals out of the ground and brought them to Dirt, and whatever he named them, that was their name — but while they all had mates, there was no comparable mate for Dirt. So God caused him to fall asleep, and pulled a rib out of his side, and from that rib, He made a woman. Different — so different from Dirt — and yet comparable to him, his match.

God woke him, and brought her to him. Dirt had never seen anything like her before, but he knew her for what she was: bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. The woman was him, she was part of him and one with him…but distinct from him, and quite different. God gave them to each other, and marriage was born. And He blessed them: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and rule over it — over all its creatures.”

God had signed His canvas, and He saw that it was good. And on the seventh day, God rested.

(Of course, it didn’t take us long to mess it up, but in Christ God is re-forming a new humanity that will one day inherit the earth, and once again be His perfected signature on the canvas of creation.)

That is the real story of how you came to be, and you are heir to all the considerable dignity that it implies. It is true of all people — all ethnicities, all creeds, all sexual orientations, all genders. As Paul would later summarize the story, “He made from one blood every nation under heaven.”

In the church, we have the nasty habit of treating certain people as if they don’t belong. Not just as if they don’t belong in the church — which would be bad enough —  but as if they don’t belong anywhere at all. Which distinguishing traits we decide to ostracize varies from culture to culture, from church to church, but churches that swear off this sin, and truly welcome whoever God brings them? Those churches are still quite rare.

We of all people should know better. The church is a hospital, not a country club. There’s no such thing as being too sick to go to the hospital. If you are here, then you were handcrafted in your mother’s womb for a purpose, and if you are still using the communal oxygen, then God hasn’t given up on you. Why should we?

Unfortunately, homosexuals are one of the groups that the church has too often given up on. We have preferred to ignore them, to pretend that they didn’t exist, to treat them as ‘other,’ rather than as part of us — people created by God with dignity and purpose. It was more comfortable to simply pass them by. But God is far less interested in our comfort than he is in leading us to fulfill our purpose: to be His signature on the canvas of creation. To that end, He has provided the Church in the USA with a situation that forces us to engage. Gay marriage promises to be quite a mess in the Church, and that is great news! The Church gets a lot of mileage out of messes — look at the Christological controversies or the Reformation.

The challenge before us is to mirror the Trinity as God has called us to do by showing honor to all people, by loving all sinners as Christ loved all sinners, by loving those who are different from us, by welcoming all who come as a hospital welcomes all who come. The challenge is to do all this faithfully, not out of sentimentality but because we are faithful to the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ, who called us to be like Him.

This means that a gay couple who walks into one of our churches must be deeply loved, no matter how uncomfortable that might make some of the people in the church. We walk by faith, not by sentiment. It does not mean, however, that we should be performing their marriage ceremony. The exegesis is not in any way unclear here: the same story that tells me a gay man is part of me and has dignity and purpose just like I do, also tells me that marriage is a man and a woman given to one another by God. The rest of the biblical revelation repeatedly reinforces this (including some pointed instructions on divorce that most evangelicals have seen fit to ignore), and repeatedly says that same-sex unions are sin. We may struggle with why that would be the case (and I would suggest that the answers are in that same story, above), but again, we walk by faith, not by sentiment. If you are attempting to submit yourself to the word of God, there are some complicated interpretive problems that you will have difficulty untangling — but this isn’t one of them.

The practical question posed by the legal possibility of gay marriage is likewise pretty simple. “Same-sex marriage” is a contradiction on the order of “four-sided triangles,” and it won’t do for Christ’s people to dignify the sin with a four-sided triangle celebration ceremony. If we do that, we become a hospital that works against the patient, rather than helping him heal.

This issue is not hard for us because the text is unclear. It is hard for us because the demands of faith clash with the demands of sentiment. Some folks’ sentiment is that all things gay are icky, and they want to pretend the whole thing doesn’t exist, and make the “icky” people unwelcome in the church. Other folks’ sentiment is to be welcoming, but offer no call to repentance. The demands of faith cut against both these impulses, and require of us a response that is loving and welcoming while presenting God’s call to mirror His nature on earth. Doing that well — that is going to take a miracle. Let’s pray that God will work that miracle in us.

***

You may also enjoy the other posts in July’s Synchroblog:

Comments Off on Imago Dei: Loving the Different | Meditations, synchroblog | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

…but He never really does

21 July 2015

“Hey, do you think God could really speak today? Could He reveal Himself to someone with a thought, an impression, a circumstance?”

Sure. Shoot, He could do an audible voice if He wanted to. Nobody really thinks God couldn’t do it. He’s God, after all.”

“Great. Glad we’re on the same page about that. So last night, when I was praying, God said…”

“Wait. What do you mean, ‘God said’?”

“I mean that He talked to me, and I heard it. Look here in my journal — I even wrote it down.”

“Oh come on! How do you know that’s God?”

“Same way I know it’s my Mom calling when I hear her on the phone — I know what her voice sounds like.”

“You’re telling me you literally heard an audible voice, and you know it was God?”

“No, I’m telling you God spoke to me in my thoughts, and I know what it sounds like when He does that.”

“Don’t be silly! How could you possibly tell?”

*****

Interesting, huh? Here we have a conversation between two Christians, both of whom profess that God can speak to individuals today — to whomever He wants, anytime He wants. But one of them is certain, in advance of all the evidence, that He didn’t speak to this particular guy last night. This is the difference between theology on paper and theology in real life: only one of them actually expects it to happen. Last night, only one of them was listening in the expectation that God might speak. Big surprise — only one of them heard anything.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Answering the 40 Questions

17 July 2015

On July 3, Matthew Vines posted an article titled “40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality.” A friend brought the article to my attention, and I wrote out my answers to the 40 questions mostly as an exercise for myself. Some of the questions were really good, thought-provoking discussion starters. Some exposed really weird presuppositions about history, marriage, and Christianity. A few questions struck me as purely rhetorical traps, but it might be that I misunderstood. All in all, I think the article bears discussing. So let’s. Here are my answers. What are yours?

  1. Do you accept that sexual orientation is not a choice?
    I doubt it’s that simple. We are sinners by nature and by choice; why wouldn’t both enter into it? I suspect that for most of us, our choices, especially our early choices, have something to do with it, as do our native proclivities and our early experiences. At the moment, it is politically convenient to present sexual orientation as fixed at birth and totally immutable, something one discovers rather than something one develops. (It is, in other words, the last stand of essentialism.) Ten minutes after the political necessity passes, I expect we’ll be up to our necks in carefully footnoted research about how sexual orientation is far more nuanced, complex and dynamic than we previously suspected.
  2. Do you accept that sexual orientation is highly resistant to attempts to change it?
    If you mean ham-handed attempts to “decide not to be gay” and that sort of thing, then yeah, I do. Many of any given person’s desires are highly resistant to that sort of will-driven change — a “beach bum” can’t just decide not to like the beach and love the desert instead, either.That said, I have known people who experienced themselves as having one sexual orientation, then later experienced themselves as having a different sexual orientation. Since I’ve seen it go straight to gay and gay to straight, again, the situation does seem to be a bit more complicated. And “gay for the stay” is a thing among prisoners for a reason.
  3. How many meaningful relationships with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people do you have?
    Of course I don’t know. I’m 40 years old; I remember a time when almost nobody was ‘out’ in mainstream America. I had a friend in high school that was gay — he didn’t know I knew, and I didn’t bring it up to him out of respect for his decision to keep it private. I have (or have had) good friendships with several LGBT folk, along with a fairly large number of acquaintances. But here I have a question in response: So what? What are the implications for the conversation if someone says “Well, I’ve never had any,” or conversely, their number is bigger than yours?
  4. How many openly LGBT people would say you are one of their closest friends?
    You’d have to ask them. 
  5. How much time have you spent in one-on-one conversation with LGBT Christians about their faith and sexuality?
    A little. Not a ton, but not many seem to want to have that conversation with me — there’s a self-selection factor in play here.
  6. Do you accept that heterosexual marriage is not a realistic option for most gay people?
    I’m not sure that I do. It appears to have been the default option for nearly all of humanity for nearly all of human history. Obviously it can be done, and usually was. I guess we’d have to talk about what you mean by “realistic option.”
  7. Do you accept that lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for most gay people if all same-sex relationships are sinful?
    Lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for anybody who doesn’t get married. It was good enough for Jesus — what’s wrong with it?
  8. How many gay brothers and sisters in Christ have you walked with on the path of mandatory celibacy, and for how long?
    Not sure why it would matter if they’re gay or not — mandatory celibacy is mandatory celibacy. But to answer your question, a couple, and for a while.
    I have the same follow-up question here as in #3. So what? From your perspective, what are the implications for the discussion if I say “None,” or if my number is bigger than yours?
  9. What is your answer for gay Christians who struggled for years to live out a celibacy mandate but were driven to suicidal despair in the process?
    The same as for straight Christians who struggled for years to live out a celibacy mandate but were driven to suicidal despair in the process, or for any Christian who struggled with anything whatever and was driven to suicidal despair in the process. In a nutshell, to walk with them and help them to walk with God and hear His voice, so as to pursue their God-given destinies rather than letting their whole lives be about what they can’t do. I can hear the peanut gallery muttering something about cliches and platitudes, and I have two things to say: first, you may have had someone throw those words at you before, someone who didn’t know you, didn’t walk with you, someone who didn’t themselves live out the realities to which those words refer. Someone who was using “cast your cares on Jesus” as a screen to keep you away, because they were afraid of your hurts and your despair. Regardless of your personal history with them, those statements are not platitudes. They are living truths, and if God puts you in my life, I will live them with you, neck-deep in your mess (and you in mine), doing whatever it takes to help. Second, I know this approach is real because I have lived it out myself. Suicidal despair and I are old enemies.
  10. Has mandatory celibacy produced good fruit in the lives of most gay Christians you know?
    Most gay Christians I know haven’t tried it. A great number of the unmarried straight Christians I know haven’t tried it either. But yes — obedience produces good fruit, which ought not to be surprising. Lack of this particular obedience is a serious problem in the church, and our inability to address the issues surrounding gay “marriage” is just a symptom of a much deeper problem: evangelicals have as much trouble as the general culture does with sexual ethics. As a group, we hate biblical sexual ethics generally, and fall woefully short of even trying to live up to them. Having deified orgasm, we are now prepared to believe that there are many roads up the mountain, and it doesn’t really matter which one you take, as long as it gets you there.
  11. How many married same-sex couples do you know?
    One…but they just split up. Same follow-up question as #3.
  12. Do you believe that same-sex couples’ relationships can show the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
    I am sure that at times it can. Sin in one area does not stop God from producing fruit in our lives — for which all thanksgiving. It does not follow that the sin is not sin, or that God approves of it, or that we ought to turn a blind eye to it, or refuse to call it by its right name.
  13. Do you believe that it is possible to be a Christian and support same-sex marriage in the church?

    There’s some kind of weird presupposition behind these “Is it possible to be a Christian and ____” questions. It’s possible to be a Christian and deny Jesus (cf. Peter). It’s possible to be a Christian and commit murder (as some of the addressees of the epistle of James had done). It’s possible to be a Christian and an adulterer (as had some of the Corinthians). It’s possible to be a Christian and so abuse the poor at the Lord’s Table that God actually kills you over it (the Corinthians again — they were a mess!) In the same vein, it’s surely possible to be a Christian and a practicing homosexual — or simply approving of Christian homosexuals. Sure. God receives all who come to Him into His family. He doesn’t require that you clean up first — just come. And once you’re part of the family, you’re part of the family forever. If we are faithless, He remains faithful. But it certainly is possible to be faithless. It’s possible to be a Christian and sin in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone. Happens all the time, and praise God, He is kind to us. He came to seek and save the lost. So all that said, is supporting same-sex marriage the act of a discerning and faithful Christian? No. it’s rather plainly not. Does it define you out of the family? Of course not. God is a better father than that.
  14. Do you believe that it is possible to be a Christian and support slavery?
    Many were. Including Moses and Paul, depending on what you mean by “support slavery.”
  15. If not, do you believe that Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards were not actually Christians because they supported slavery?
    See above.
  16. Do you think supporting same-sex marriage is a more serious problem than supporting slavery?

    Yes, and how! They’re not even in the same league. Supporting same-sex marriage is supporting four-sided triangles. You are declaring a thing to be which is simply not so — and doing so in order to dignify a serious sin. Slavery doesn’t fall into the same category. So yes, it’s a much more serious problem.
  17. Did you spend any time studying the Bible’s passages about slavery before you felt comfortable believing that slavery is wrong?

    Lots, which is why I would say that slavery is not necessarily wrong. It was not a sin for Abraham to own slaves, nor for Israel to own slaves, nor for Paul — under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit — to return Onesimus to Philemon and encourage slaves to obey their masters and masters to treat their slaves well. If you believe that slavery is categorically wrong, well…did you read any of these passages? Would you accuse God of wrong?
  18. Does it cause you any concern that Christians throughout most of church history would have disagreed with you?



    Moi    ? No, they wouldn’t. Does it bother you that they would find your position unconscionable?
  19. Did you know that, for most of church history, Christians believed that the Bible taught the earth stood still at the center of the universe?

    Some Christians said so, because they made the mistake of rooting their cosmology in pagan balloon juice and prettying it up with a few verses. It’s a pretty serious mistake to make, but it happens. As I said above, it doesn’t automatically define you out fo the faith, for which all thanksgiving.
  20. Does it cause you any concern that you disagree with their interpretation of the Bible?

    Nope. Does it cause you any concern that you are repeating their methodological mistake with the current vintage of pagan balloon juice?
  21. Did you spend any time studying the Bible’s verses on the topic before you felt comfortable believing that the earth revolves around the sun?

    I did, actually. I was quite the apologetics geek in my teenage years, before I learned how to love people instead of clubbing them.
  22. Do you know of any Christian writers before the 20th century who acknowledged that gay people must be celibate for life due to the church’s rejection of same-sex relationships?

    What a very tactical framing of the question. No, prior to the 20th century’s particular madness, this framing of the issue was unthinkable.  All the single folk were told the same thing regardless of sexual orientation: marry the spouse your family picks for you, and be fruitful. The relevant passages were fifth commandment and the creation mandate.
    Counterquestion: do you know of Christian writers before the 20th century who encouraged sexual activity outside of marriage? And even if you had dozens of  examples, which you definitely do not, do you think they matter, stacked up against the plain teaching of Scripture?
  23. If not, might it be fair to say that mandating celibacy for gay Christians is not a traditional position?

    This is just dumb. Traditionally, Mom and Dad picked a spouse for their kids, who had precious little choice in the matter anyway. Do you prefer that position? And the traditional position is to remain celibate unless and until you marry a person of the opposite sex — and you know it.
  24. Do you believe that the Bible explicitly teaches that all gay Christians must be single and celibate for life?

    Nope. It says no such thing. A gay man is free to marry a woman and bear children — as regularly happened.  A lesbian is similarly free to marry a man and raise children together. The Bible says, “Children, obey your parents,” which for most of history meant marrying who they said.  But perhaps you’ve heard of “necessary consequence?”
  25. If not, do you feel comfortable affirming something that is not explicitly affirmed in the Bible?

    Well, given what I said above, this little trap doesn’t apply to me — but just to be talking about it, yes, I do. The trinity, for example. Again, perhaps you’ve heard of “necessary consequence?”
  26. Do you believe that the moral distinction between lust and love matters for LGBT people’s romantic relationships?

    Of course, although it’s more a spectrum than a hard distinction. I’m not sure 0% lust is really attainable. But just because you care about the whole person to some extent doesn’t mean your actions are in their best interests. You can damage a person with good intentions, and by placing us out of relationship with the opposite sex and in wrong relationship to our own sex, same-sex relationships mar God’s design and damage the lives He wanted us to have.
  27. Do you think that loving same-sex relationships should be assessed in the same way as the same-sex behavior Paul explicitly describes as lustful in Romans 1?

    Paul seems to be saying that lust drives the descent into same-sex relationships, and he makes no qualifications in his denunciation of same-sex relationships. But come now, be serious. The exegesis here is in no way complicated. Paul’s denunciations of same-sex sexual relationships are as straightforward as they could be.
  28. Do you believe that Paul’s use of the terms “shameful” and “unnatural” in Romans 1:26-27 means that all same-sex relationships are sinful?

    Yup.
  29. Would you say the same about Paul’s description of long hair in men as “shameful” and against “nature” in 1 Corinthians 11:14, or would you say he was describing cultural norms of his time?

    I would say the same, actually. I see you rolling your eyes, but I’m serious, and so should you be. There are pretty hefty exegetical reasons to take it that way, and the reason we overwhelmingly try to beg off on some “cultural norm” explanation is not because the exegesis points that way — it rather plainly doesn’t — but because we don’t want to believe it. Sounds familiar….
  30. Do you believe that the capacity for procreation is essential to marriage?

    It is central to marriage in a center-of-the-bell-curve kind of way — and God explicitly commanded it, so it’s out of bounds for a Christian marriage to be hostile to procreation. That said, procreation does not define marriage: Adam and Eve had a marriage before there were children. The marriage must be valid in order for the activity that leads to procreation to be lawful. 
  31. If so, what does that mean for infertile heterosexual couples?

    It means it really hurts to be me some days. Other days I don’t think about it as much. Apparently today’s going to be one of the former — thanks for that. (If you’re feeling bad for bringing up a topic that is personally quite painful for me, don’t. My feelings are real, but they are not, in fact, the point, and you don’t have to let them dictate the course of the discussion.) Now, you see what I did there — dodge the issue and make it about my feelings? Let’s just make that off-limits for everybody, because it’s not helpful to the discussion. So to actually answer the question, for infertile couples it means that God opens and closes the womb as He wills, and we trust Him to know best, even though we don’t understand.
  32. How much time have you spent engaging with the writings of LGBT-affirming Christians like Justin Lee, James Brownson, and Rachel Murr?

    I haven’t. I don’t read the patents for perpetual-motion machines, either, and for the same reason.
  33. What relationship recognition rights short of marriage do you support for same-sex couples?

    If by “relationship recognition rights” you  ean, do  I pretend they’re really not together, then of course not. I If you mean some version of “marriage lite” like civil unions, I don’t. It isn’t my job to condemn or to fix people, but neither is it my job to nurture their sins. It is my job to love them. On a good day, I do my best. On a bad day, I do poorly, like everyone else.
  34. What are you doing to advocate for those rights?

    See above.
  35. Do you know who Tyler Clementi, Leelah Alcorn, and Blake Brockington are, and did your church offer any kind of prayer for them when their deaths made national news?

    My church doesn’t offer up prayers for the dead, but that’s not really the point you’re making. No, I had to google them. So I want to ask that follow-up question again: So what? Is attention to the popular news now a requirement for reading the Bible properly?
  36. Do you know that LGBT youth whose families reject them are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than LGBT youth whose families support them?

    Define “reject” and “support” please. I smell a false dichotomy.
  37. Have you vocally objected when church leaders and other Christians have compared same-sex relationships to things like bestiality, incest, and pedophilia?

    No, and for good reason. You listed four perversions in the same sentence. Why would I object?
  38. How certain are you that God’s will for all gay Christians is lifelong celibacy?

    I’m not. See above re. marriage. That said, God’s will for all unmarried Christians is celibacy, and again, by “marriage,” I mean the real kind.
  39. What do you think the result would be if we told all straight teenagers in the church that if they ever dated someone they liked, held someone’s hand, kissed someone, or got married, they would be rebelling against God?

    I think we would be lying to them about what God said, and as with all such lies, the results would be disastrous.
  40. Are you willing to be in fellowship with Christians who disagree with you on this topic?

    Again, define your terms. Have-a-beer-together fellowship? Sure. I do. Make-common-cause-on-sexual-issues fellowship? Not a chance — how would that even work? Welcome them to the Table? Of course — that’s where we all meet Jesus; why would I try to keep them away?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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